KIRA
The 52nd India Gem & Jewellery Awards (IGJA) recognised both KIRA, the world's largest grower of CVD lab-grown diamonds, and the man who founded it. The Lifetime Achievement Award, the industry's highest personal honour, was conferred on Shri Vallabhbhai Patel. KIRA took the award for Highest Employment on Company Rolls, which no lab-grown diamond company had won before.
The awards, organised by the Gem & Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), were presented at the Bharat Diamond Bourse, Mumbai, by Chief Guest Shri Amit Shah, Hon'ble Union Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Cooperation, who called on the industry to keep the entire lab-grown diamond value chain in Indian hands.
Shri Vallabhbhai S. Patel was born into a cotton-farming family in a village of about five hundred people in Gujarat's Bhavnagar district, and studied only to the fourth standard. In 1971 he took a job at a diamond-cutting workshop there and stayed seven years. A business of his own in 1978 failed and left him in debt. His father gave him the money to repay it, and in 1982 he moved his family to Bombay.
In 1985 he founded Kiran Gems with his brothers and built it into the world's largest manufacturer of natural polished diamonds. The company has been among the most decorated names at these awards for years, winning IGJA honours edition after edition. Then, in 2022, when much of the trade was still undecided about lab-grown diamonds, he founded KIRA. In roughly four years it has become the world's largest grower of CVD lab-grown diamonds. He is the only person in the industry to have built the world's largest company in natural diamonds and in lab-grown. At the launch in 2022 he set out KIRA's purpose in four words.
"Har ghar Hira, har ghar KIRA." i.e. A diamond in every home. "I have worked all my life on a stone very few people in my village could ever own. A grown diamond changes that," said Shri Vallabhbhai Patel, Founder, KIRA, at its launch in 2022. Four years on, that is the company he has built.
"Even at this age, he has the same exuberance and curiosity he always had. Few can hold a vision and build it at this scale. He is on the floor every day and wants to know everything. A well-deserved award, and all of us are proud to work under a leader like him," said Ashish Lakhani, Director, KIRA.
When lab-grown diamonds began to scale in India, the common view was that they would cost jobs: a diamond grown in a reactor would need fewer hands than one taken out of the ground. KIRA's numbers say otherwise. Growing is only the first stage. Every stone still has to be planned, sawn, cut, polished, graded, certified, set and shipped, and each stage is done by a person on the company's rolls.
In roughly four years KIRA has gone from 2,000 people to more than 10,500, the largest direct workforce of any company in India's gem and jewellery industry, a sector that employs over 50 lakh people nationally. It is the measure on which GJEPC judged the award for 2025-26.
Alongside the payroll, KIRA and the founding family support community development, women's empowerment, hostel donations and the Kiran medical college and hospital.
Behind that workforce is the scale that makes KIRA the world's largest grower and manufacturer of lab-grown diamonds: 5,000+ CVD growing machines and over 400,000 polished carats a month, produced on 100 MW of captive solar at a one million sq ft facility in Surat.
"Every other award in this industry measures what a company sold. This one measures how many people it employs. More than 10,500 people have built KIRA in four years. This recognition belongs to them," said Shanay Parekh, Director, KIRA.
"This award is for a healthy workplace, community development, women's empowerment and facilities almost nobody else in this industry can match. The happier our people are, the better the outcome. The credit goes to our artisans, who cut one in every three CVD diamonds in the world right here at KIRA," said Rajesh Lakhani, Founder, KIRA.
Shri Amit Shah devoted a substantial part of his address to lab-grown diamonds, putting the government's weight behind a category the trade had argued over for years.
"Times are changing, and the nature of trade is evolving too. The era of lab-grown diamonds is upon us, and I urge you not to focus merely on the price point. In terms of volume, the market for lab-grown diamonds is poised to expand to nearly 50 times the size of the current diamond market. This represents a monumental opportunity," said Shri Amit Shah, Hon'ble Union Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Cooperation.
"As the era of lab-grown diamonds dawns, we possess the infrastructure, the capabilities, the capital and, most importantly, entrepreneurs like you. I urge all of you to ensure that the entire ecosystem and manufacturing chain of lab-grown diamonds remain firmly in Indian hands: machinery, the diamonds themselves, jewellery, brands, and showrooms in cities across the globe," he said at the 52nd IGJA in Mumbai.
That end-to-end ambition is the model KIRA already runs. Growing, cutting, polishing, grading, certification and jewellery manufacturing all happen under one roof in Surat, with channel partner offices across the globe, on the world's largest fleet of CVD machines and a sustainability-first approach built in from the start. The scale the Minister called for is the scale KIRA operates at today.
ABOUT THE EVENT
The 52nd India Gem & Jewellery Awards were held on 13 September 2026 at the Bharat Diamond Bourse, Mumbai. Established by GJEPC 52 years ago, the awards recognise export performance, value addition, employment generation and R&D investment. India's gem and jewellery exports recorded US$27.72 billion in FY 2025-26; GJEPC has set a target of US$100 billion by 2040.
Dignitaries present:
Shri Amit Shah, Hon'ble Union Minister of Home Affairs and Minister of Cooperation (Chief Guest); Shri Devendra Fadnavis, Hon'ble Chief Minister of Maharashtra; Shri Eknath Shinde, Hon'ble Deputy Chief Minister of Maharashtra; Shri Harsh Sanghavi, Hon'ble Deputy Chief Minister of Gujarat; and others.
ABOUT KIRA
KIRA is the world's largest grower and manufacturer of CVD lab-grown diamonds. It grows, cuts, polishes, grades and sets lab-grown diamonds and diamond jewellery under one roof in Surat, India, and supplies the trade in 75+ countries with 400,000+ certified stones live and 4,700+ partners. Offices: Mumbai, Surat, Hong Kong, New York. kiradiam.com
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